The Paulsboro Plan – Coming To Your Town?

Shelter in Place – Does this look like your house?

Duck & Cover - And Shelter in Place

Readers here know that a toxic train derailed in Paulsboro NJ early on the morning of Friday November 30. By pure luck, most of the community was not awake and out and about when it happened.

A cloud of toxic vinyl chloride gas rapidly spread from one of the rail cars, throughout the community. Over 80 exposed people were sickened and sent to local emergency rooms. Luckily, a nearby elementary school dodged the toxic bullet.

We now learn that emergency responders lacked proper equipment and the hand held air monitoring devices didn’t have working batteries. As a result, we don’t know the levels of toxic gas to which people were exposed immediately after the accident.

[Maybe the chemical companies that make billions in profits producing these poisons could pass the hat and buy the town some batteries for Christmas? Voluntary philanthropy is the only way to go because Gov. Christie won’t stand for any regulatory requirements and “job killing red tape” and unfunded State mandates.]

Later, EPA mobile lab air monitoring showed unsafe levels throughout the community – even 4 days after the accident.

Vinyl chloride is a highly toxic and carcinogenic gas – children are especially susceptible to adverse health effects from even short term low concentration exposures.

Current science is not able to say with certainty whether there will be any adverse health effects to those exposed.

Residents were never told about all this – but they were told that the air was “safe” and that there would be NO health effects to the people who were exposed.

After pressure and threats by the chemical industry to shut down plants and move production and jobs out of state, the toxic trains are now again running, despite the fact that there is no public report by the NTSB about the cause of the accident,  the ancient bridge has not been replaced, and failed prevention and emergency response plans have not been corrected.

No biggie, right?

Portions of the town were evacuated – while other residents were told to “shelter in place”. The evacuation zone expanded and contracted over time, and the shelter in place guidance was rescinded. Community meetings were scheduled, cancelled and rescheduled. The press was asked to attend and then told not to attend, and then reinvited.

Chaos, no?

So we thought we’d provide “official” information from the NJ Office of Emergency Management of exactly what shelter in place  is supposed to look like.

[While this Guidance requires “preplanning, we note that the Guidance was not posted on the Unified Command website until December 14 – 2 weeks after the accident – we assume that it is intended to address the statistically inevitable future accidents.]

Here’s how “shelter in place” is supposed to work: